“The niqab ban had an incentive effect”, denounces Agnès De Feo

Illustration of a woman in a niqab, in Paris, rue de la Goutte d'Or, in June 2018. -

• On October 10, it will be ten years since the text prohibiting the concealment of the face in public space was adopted in France.

• Between 2008 and 2018, sociologist Agnès De Feo met and heard from hundreds of women wearing the niqab.

• After a thesis, the researcher is publishing a summary of her work on Wednesday in a book, entitled

  Derrière le niqab.

Ten years ago, France was torn apart over the issue of banning the wearing of the full veil in public spaces.

“Self-denial”, “attack on human dignity”, “obscene accoutrement”… Even today, the sociologist Agnès De Feo remembers the terms then used by a part of the political class favorable to the prohibition law - adopted in October 2011 at the instigation of French President Nicolas Sarkozy - and massively reported in the media.

At the time, the researcher had been working on women who wear the niqab for two years.

"I wanted to hear them", she explains today to 

Between 2008 and 2018, Agnès De Feo met more than a hundred of them.

After several documentaries and a thesis devoted to this subject, this Wednesday, September 30, she is publishing a summary of her work in a book entitled

 (Armand Colin editions).

The sociologist paints a portrait of sixteen women with diverse profiles.

Some, radicalized, left for Syria to join the ranks of Daesh, others abandoned the full veil and sometimes religion.

Two days before Emmanuel Macron's presentation of his strategy to fight "separatism", including Islamist separatism, Agnès De Feo points out in particular the incentive effects of prohibition laws.

On October 11, it will be 10 years since France officially banned the wearing of the niqab.

In your opinion, who spent 10 years following and listening to women who have worn the full veil, what consequences has this law had?

I started my study in 2008 - a year before the start of the niqab controversy, which began in June 2009 with the establishment of a commission of inquiry dedicated to the National Assembly.

What I observed is that the controversy had an incentive effect on the wearing of the niqab, which was reinforced with the passage of the law in October 2010. I met two very distinct groups of women. , those who wore the niqab before the law and those who decided to wear it after the law.

Those who wore it before are pietistic women, very believing, in an ascetic approach, who almost seek to cut themselves off from society but as nuns, and in an approach that concerns only them.

The second group was drawn to this visible marker of Islamism because it posed a problem for society.

They want to stand out and claimed the wearing of the niqab as revenge on society.

Some did not even wear the veil before the law and I met women who converted to Islam at the time of the controversy, because it was becoming subversive.

Most of these converts also come from atheistic or agnostic and sometimes Islamophobic families.

This incentive effect of the law is very important and has been completely neglected by the political class, who did not understand that the text could have this effect.

In your investigation, you endeavor to deconstruct the received ideas about these women who wear the full veil.

Which do you think are the furthest from the reality you have studied?

The first lesson is that, contrary to what many people think, those who wear the full veil are not - or very rarely - submissive women but rather rebellious women.

They are very authoritarian, very demanding, in search of the "perfect Muslim".

So much so that they often combine very short relationships with men who end badly.

The other notable fact is their lightness in matters of religion and their lack of religious knowledge, especially for those who chose to wear the niqab after 2010. Their references are mainly taken from books found on the Internet and written by Saudi authors whom they call "scholars".

But these are books that essentially list "rules" of behavior or dress to be a "good Muslim", so it remains very superficial and focused on appearance.

You write that wearing the niqab should be understood as a "manifestation of modernity" and not as a return to traditions.

Why ?

Almost all the women who wear the niqab and whom I interviewed were born in France.

It is important to remember this.

They were educated in public schools, sometimes in Catholic establishments, but not at all in Muslim denominational schools.

In the wearing of the niqab, they reflect a form of discomfort with regard to the place of women in French society.

Many told me that they were fed up with being objectified by men, that they wanted to remain “masters” of their bodies, and some even called themselves feminists!

I know it can be hard to hear, but that's what they think and say.

It should also be remembered that this garment was not at all worn by their ancestors since the niqab is a costume imported from Saudi Arabia which corresponds to a wave of “re-Islamization”.

Many are also in a very adolescent process, of reaction against the established order, it is subversive and they say it very clearly: "I am stronger than the State" or "I will not be forced into anything".

We note, however, that some of those you have followed - including the jihadist who became a member of Daesh Emilie König - make the niqab a political argument in the service of a radical ideology ...

This is called a reversal of the stigma.

That is to say, we claim our own stigma.

However, I did not imagine that some of the women I met would go so far as to go to Syria to join Daesh.

The physical attacks - many of which were victims once the law was passed - created among some a feeling of revolt and strong anger.

Emilie König, for example, did not wear the niqab before the law was passed and she politicized the wearing of her full veil over time.

Then, indeed, she was in a constant search for the forbidden and radical.

This Friday, Emmanuel Macron will present his "strategy" to fight against separatism, and in particular "Islamist separatism".

How do you see this question, which comes up regularly in the public debate?

Separatism was created by successive governments.

Muslim denominational schools were extremely rare before the passage of the 2004 law on the prohibition of religious symbols in schools.

Ditto for the law on the prohibition of the full veil, it was a very marginal practice.

And today we risk ending up with the same phenomenon with the prohibition of the certificate of virginity, while this practice is already prohibited by doctors and gynecologists.

We give a sounding board to all of this.

What strikes me is that as soon as it touches on Islam and radical Islam, we only speak in abstraction.

We lack figures, ground, surveys and we create phenomena that do not exist or that are ultra-minority in an electoral interest.

The public debate will still ignite and the risk of stigmatization is real.

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* “Behind the niqab”, by Agnès De Feo, Armand Colin, September 30, 2020, 288 pages, 17.9 euros.

• Radical Islamism

• Society

• Sociology

• Islam

• Full veil

• Niqab